she told me. "The incision is not healing at all and he keeps trying to talk and then breaking off in the middle of a sentence with the pain."

"Talking about anything in particular?" I asked suspiciously.

"The merest chit-chat. The weather ... pleasantries about the hospital ... jokes about doctors in particular. He doesn't have a very high regard for doctors, it seems. Thinks they are notable atheists, I gather." She smiled.

"Many thanks for the diagnosis, Sister," I told her gravely. Then I added, "I suppose you are having to maintain a considerable quarantine and decontamination routine as Father's nurse?"

"Oh yes. In this wing, you know, we are all in solitary, approaching no persons other than our patient and the doctors ... sometimes for as much as three months after the end of a case. It provides excellent time for a retreat, which is why most of us apply for such duty." She pointed to the small prie-dieu in her tiny cubicle, which stood as a buffer between the contagion room and the hallway of the ward.

"If I am right about the nature of Father Burt's disease," I told her, "you will soon see the end of this case, and without any three months' decontamination, either."

She smiled again. "You couldn't say a happier thing," she said, "even though I shall probably apply for a leprosy case if I am relieved of this one. I've become very concerned about Father Phillip."

"Good. He needs your prayers as no man probably ever needed them before. I'll see him now." I crossed her small room and opened the inner door and went in.

Father Phillip was lying flat in the narrow white bed, his arms lying listlessly on either side of the slight hump of his body under the sheet. The big bulge halfway down was his knees over a pillow, the usual position for post-operative appendectomies.

He squeezed out a smile with an effort. "Morning, doctor," he said.

"Father Nick," I smiled back. "Father Nick Molina of Pathology, Father."

His wasted body jerked as if with a knife thrust. Then he said, "Excuse me. I had forgotten that there were doctors who were not laymen. I'm sorry." He drew up a shoulder against his cheek in a curious gesture, then shivered.

"Sorry for what?" I asked.

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